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Wyoming

There’s so much to tell you about my time at Ucross, and I also don’t want to tell you about any of it because it is so perfect I don’t want to ruin it by attempting to explain it. What I will say is this: there was this me that existed a long time ago, before I had kids, before I was married, before I started writing, this version of me that I thought only existed in a particular place at a particular time and could never be retrieved or revisited. This me liked to read and think and scribble about what she was reading and thinking about and walk around for hours taking pictures of whatever crazy beauty passed her way. This was the first me I ever liked.

After a few days at Ucross, there she was again, that me I liked. Turns out I am not just a screaming mom running late to get the kids out the door, or a nagging wife asking her husband to pick up his socks, or a time-deprived writer scrambling for one more minute to finish a story for a deadline. I was still this other me, this curious, world-loving, wandering, autonomous me. It is no exaggeration to say I had absolutely no idea I was still this same person underneath the minutae of the everyday.

And I realized how if I was that person then long ago, and was this person again at Ucross, then isn’t it fair to believe she will be there when I go looking for her the next time?

Where is your you that you thought was gone?

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Margaret Malone is the author of the story collection PEOPLE LIKE YOU (Atelier26 Books), Finalist for the 2016 PEN Hemingway Award and Winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize.

Her writing can be found in The Rumpus, The Missouri Review, The Masters Review, Oregon Humanities, and elsewhere.

She lives in Portland, Oregon where she is a co-host of the artist and literary gathering SHARE.